What DAW are you gonna use? How many VSTs will you be running?
Reason is quite low on cpu usage. Other DAWs with a certain amount of VSTs open will be heavy.
Search the forum for AI advise. Internal sound card is not gonna cut it. Focusrite Scarlett is a popular one atm. Depends on what you want to spend. Check the forum for more advise, use the search function. Forget about internal sound card completely if you're going with a laptop. Even with a desktop, easier to go external nowadays. The only internals for a desktop that deliver proper quality is harder to find and usually cost more.
Depending on how heavy you are gonna run your DAW and the amount of instruments , you'll have to determine a decent amount of memory. 4 gig is on the low side. It starts at 8, that'll cut it, 16 is being very safe.
Do you want apple or windows pc? Apple is more expensive compared to other laptops. Depends on your preference or what you're used to.
Core i7 should be nice yeah.
Do you want it to be mobile? Otherwise a desktop pc gives you more options on customization and is cheaper.
Brand is not gonna say if it'll run your DAW properly. Brand does say something about reliability.
What screen size are you thinking of? I chose 15 inch cuz of portability. I don't have a car and I do everything by bike (Netherlands
). 15 inch fits in a common backpack. It is a bit on the small size if you try to do rocket surgery on it. I can hook it to a tele or bigger monitor.
Graphics card: do you plan to play games on it? If not, cheaper graphics card or with intel, the internal graphics card that comes with your processor will do fine. Don't spend money on a graphics card only to be able to run your DAW. It'll run on the 30 to 40 bucks graphics cards fine.
Check online stores in your country what they sell for your price range, then do google searches for reviews. Also, do a search for reviews about the online store you're thinking of buying from.
If you've done all this and thinking of buying one, still pondering about a few options , you can link em here, when I have the time, I'll take a look at them if you want.